Climate Center News

In what’s become a spring tradition like Passover and Easter, carbon dioxide has set a record high each year since measurements began. It stood at 280 ppm when record keeping began at Mauna Loa in 1958. In 2013, it passed 400 ppm. Just four years later, the 400 ppm mark is no longer a novelty. It’s the norm. On Tuesday, the Mauna Loa Observatory recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide reading in excess of 410 parts per million( 410.28 ppm).

Glaciers and ice caps along Greenland's coast will not recover from current melting because it passed a tipping point 20 years ago according to a new study released in Nature Communications. However were all of Greenland's coastal ice to melt away at once, global sea level would only rise a few inches.

A repeat of mass bleaching compounds fears for the survival of
already-stressed coral, whose recovery since 2016 has been challenged by
stubbornly high sea surface temperatures, including through winter. “The climate is changing and that is bringing a much greater frequency of extreme weather events to the Great Barrier Reef”.

Climate change has been causing spring to arrive earlier and earlier, though this year is an extreme outlier. On average, spring is arriving three days earlier in the U.S. compared to the period of 1961-1980. The quickening pace of climate change means that spring could be up to 13 days earlier by mid-century and 21 days earlier by 2100 if carbon pollution isn’t cut.

Ice floating around the frozen continent usually melts to its
smallest for the year towards the end of February, the southern
hemisphere summer, before expanding again as the autumn chill sets in.
This year, sea ice extent contracted to 883,015 sq miles (2.28m sq
km) on 13 February, according to daily data from the US National Snow
and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
That extent is a fraction smaller than a previous low of 884,173 sq
miles recorded on 27 February 1997 in satellite records dating back to
1979. Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC, said he would wait for a few
days’ more measurements to confirm the record low.

Another climate report is out, the fourth ‘Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in
Europe’ report which supports the implementation and review process of the 2013 EU
Adaptation Strategy, which is foreseen for 2018, and the development of
national and transnational adaptation strategies and plans.

Global average surface temperature last year was 0.94 degrees Celsius warmer than 20th century average, 0.04 degrees C warmer than in 2015, the warmest on record since record-keeping began in 1880. July 2016 was the earth’s warmest month on record.

For the second year in a row, the Arctic is facing a late December heat wave (at least by Arctic winter standards). Temperatures are forecast to soar about 50°F above normal, which would bring them near the freezing point at the North Pole. At the North Pole, temperatures in November averaged an astonishing 27°F above normal.

The U.S. is likely going to have its second-hottest year on record, trailing only 2012. Every state is slated to have a top 10 warmest year and even at the city level, unrelenting warmth has been the main story in 2016. Ten % of 1730+ meteorological stations have broken heat records this year.

Warm air and ocean are driving a mini-meltdown at a time when Arctic sea ice should be rapidly growing. With the lowest maximum sea ice extent set two years in a row, the hottest year on record set three years in a row, global coral bleaching entering a third, what’s happening in the Arctic right now stands out for just how abnormal it is.

Another climate change signal is sounding off quietly as the largest iceberg to ever break off a glacier in Canada fell into a
lake in British Columbia this summer (2016). Amazingly no one noticed until Dr. Mauri Pelto, professor of environmental science at Nichols College
in Massachusetts and director of the North Cascade Glacier Climate
Project, saw it on a NASA photo. The
Porcupine Glacier event is due to rapid melting both on top of and underneath the glacier’s tongue,
which is floating on a lake of melted ice. Dr. Pelto said this event is a dramatic reminder that glaciers are in such rapid retreat because of climate change.

The average carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere throughout 2015 was
400 parts per million. This according to the World Meteorological
Organization. Between 1990 and 2015 there was a 37% increase in radiative forcing –
the warming effect on our climate – because of long-lived greenhouse
gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (N2O) from industrial, agricultural and domestic activities. The increase of CO2 from 2014 to 2015 was larger than the previous year and the average over the previous 10 years. Atmospheric methane reached a new high of about 1845 parts per billion
(ppb) in 2015 and is now 256% of the pre-industrial level. Nitrous oxide's atmospheric concentration in 2015 was about 328 parts per billion. This is 121% of pre-industrial levels.

"The UNFCCC Paris Agreement on fighting climate change, the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal, will come into force next month, having met the necessary conditions much earlier than predicted, as the European Parliament agreed to its ratification by the European Union in a historic vote on Tuesday. The EU will join the US, China and India, other global players and major greenhouse gas emitters, at a November meeting of Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA) in Marrakesh."

The oceans have already sucked up an enormous amount of heat due to
escalating greenhouse gas emissions, affecting marine species from
microbes to whales, according to an International Union for Conservation
of Nature (IUCN) report involving the work of 80 scientists from a dozen countries.

The ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the extra heat created
by human activity. If the same amount of heat that has been buried in
the upper 2km of the ocean had gone into the atmosphere, the surface of
the Earth would have warmed by a devastating 36°C, rather than 1°C, over
the past century.

At some point, the report says, warming waters could unlock billions
of tonnes of frozen methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the seabed
and cook the surface of the planet. This could occur even if emissions
are drastically cut, due to the lag time between emitting greenhouse
gases and their visible consequences.

August came in at 1.76˚F (0.98˚C) above the average from 1951-1980,
0.16C above August 2014, the previous record holder. The record keeps
2016 on track to be the hottest year in the books by a fair margin.

Adult krill populations have dropped by 80 to 90 percent since the 1970s. There is an ongoing scientific debate about what is causing the drop, from changes in the environment to an increase in whale populations. While other studies have looked into how ocean acidification, overfishing or more freshwater entering the sea from melting Antarctic glaciers could affect krill habitat, a new study examines the effects of a warmer ocean and a decline in sea ice on these small crustaceans. Warmer waters and lack of sea ice could lead krill habitat to shrink by as much as 80 percent by 2100.

To put this in perspective, the Greenland Ice
Sheet is losing approximately 110 million Olympic size swimming
pools worth of water each year. After the record deficit of 439 ± 62 Gt observed in 2012, which was driven by an exceptionally warm summer, subsequent ice losses have been more moderate. But the question remains, will high rates of melting continue?

This is a glimpse of our future if nothing is done to slow climate change. By
the end of the century, the number of 100-degree days are expected to skyrocket.This does not bode well for southern states. For example, Dallas is expected to be above 95 degrees for more than four months a year.